Demand Generation Campaigns: Which Ones Are Best for You?

Does San Diego demand generation work? Yes, but what is best for you can vary. This blog post helps you figure out what you need based on a set of questions:

• ho is your target audience?
• What are your competitors doing?
• How is your existing content performing?
• Are you hitting your demand-generation goals?
• How much is your budget?

Engage your audience, increase brand awareness, and convert by finding the right content mix. Read the rest of the article to learn more. Let’s go!

1. Who Is Your Target Audience?

California has one of the most diverse populations and industries in the US. A one-size-fits-all demand-generation strategy that hardly scratches the surface will not work. You must dig deeper to understand who consumes your content. For example, the Golden State remains a popular choice for millennial homebuyers. If you are into real estate, your content marketing plan to attract leads might look like this:

• Break down the large demographic. Millennials can be broken down into life stages: older ones with kids, the youngest who are new in their careers, and mid-career newlyweds. They can also be categorized according to income, geographical location, and consumer behavior. 
• Create a dynamic persona for each. Although a buyer’s profile guides your campaigns, it should be adaptable to any changes in behavior and preferences. 
• Determine their search intent. All leads go through a customer journey, but how long they stay in each stage can vary. For instance, older millennials spend more time researching than younger ones. They might be less tech-savvy and have more significant factors like children to consider. 
• Match the content with the user intent and the demographic. Now that you have basic data about your target audience, you can design content that resonates well with them. Say your campaign is for starter families. A holistic plan can include blog posts about the top family-friendly neighborhoods, 360-degree videos of home features, and even a budget calculator on your website. 

2. What Are Your Competitors Doing? 

Do you know that Barbie is not a unique idea? Another toy named Bild Lilli inspired Ruth Handler, the doll’s “mom,” and Mattel. When Barbie became famous, Louis Marx and Company unsuccessfully sued Mattel for infringement.  Keeping an eye on your competition is tricky but necessary to know how you can improve in every aspect, just like Mattel did. This is especially true with demand generation. After all, if no one knows you are an option, they will not choose your brand.  Competitor analysis nowadays is easy with artificial intelligence platforms. These tools can take a look at the following:

• Website traffic, audience demographics, bounce rate, average visit length, and page visits
• Organic search performance, keywords they rank for, backlink profiles, and domain authority
• Social media performance, including follower growth, engagement rates, posting frequency, and popular content
• Advertising strategies, such as their ad copy, media used, and platforms where they advertise
• Best-performing content according to social shares and engagement
• Brand reputation
• Email marketing tactics
• Product assortment, pricing strategy, and customer reviews

The challenge is figuring out what data here matters to you. How do you integrate this knowledge into your existing campaigns? How do you modify your online marketing plan? Do you need to add or change some elements? Working with San Diego demand-generation agencies specializing in your niche eliminates analysis paralysis and lets you maximize the benefits of big data. 

3. How Is Your Existing Content Performing?

Demand generation can start with your existing content. You can

• Conduct a technical audit to improve crawlability, indexability, and user experience.
• Update high-performing pages to compete more aggressively or rank first for your chosen keywords.
• Further diversify your content format and type to best align with user intent, target audience, or market demographic changes.
• Modify your content to follow search engine guidelines, such as mobile-first indexing and helpful content. 

For instance, studies now show that TikTok is effective in influencer marketing because of its ability to showcase humor and opinion leadership and appeal to the “hedonic experience.” If you are a real estate agency in San Diego trying to attract millennials, this platform should be part of your content plan to improve results. Here are examples:

• Short, fast-paced videos of a walk-through of homes for sale
• Creative DIY tips for home decor, remodeling, or home maintenance
• Day-in-the-life videos of a San Diego resident

What if you are a B2B? You can adjust the content according to your industry and audience. The videos might be product demos, snippets of your third-party interviews, Q&As, or webinar or podcast clips. 

4. Are You Hitting Your Demand-Generation Goals?

Why are you doing demand generation? Is it to:

• Attract organic inbound leads?
• Improve paid advertising campaign performance?
• Increase email marketing engagement?
• Stimulate interest in your brand?
• Enhance your industry authority?
• Identify and promote content in other channels?
• Form relationships with the right prospects and nurture them?
• Foster better collaborations between your sales and marketing departments?

It can be one, two, or a combination of some. However, the best goals always follow the SMART principle: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Suppose you are a California real estate agency opening in another location such as San Diego. You might already have a name, but it does not resonate with this new local market.  Your demand-generation objective might be to “increase brand recognition by 50% among first-time San Diego homebuyers in six months.”  With this in mind, your strategies can include:

• Local search optimization
• Topic clustering to improve internal link-building strategies and authority quickly
• Schema markup to appear in the local map pack
• User-generated content with previous customer reviews
• Social media to simplify discussions on market trends, tips, and home-buying ideas
• Local paid ads to support SEO, especially during the early months
• A dedicated San Diego page on your primary website with unique, local-driven content

5. How Much Is Your Budget?

Lastly, your budget is one of the factors that dictates the breadth of your demand-generation activities. This is because (1) demand generation is usually an ongoing, long-term strategy, and (2) content types vary in cost. 

• Producing white papers, such as case studies and reports, is often expensive. They often require specific subject-matter experts to interpret the data and ample time and tools to gather the information. 
• Blogs might be cheaper until you start scaling, meaning you need more content at any time. You can use AI tools for marketing, but even these can cost $50 to over $200 a month. 
• Paid ads should generally take 2% of your revenue. 
• A web redesign costs between $500 and $5,000, depending on whether it is DIY or through an agency. 

These numbers do not suggest avoiding paid ads and case studies in favor of blogs and DIY marketing. Instead, use them to prioritize your resources. 

Summing Up

Which demand-generation campaigns are best? It depends on many factors. These include your budget, goal, audience, competition, and the performance of your present content.  Focus on your production and leave the factors to an experienced agency. Digital Authority Partners (DAP) is a San Diego demand generation firm that designs and optimizes strategies based on data.  Contact us to learn more about how we can help you.